Sega Owners Eye Sony Games

A new line of software emulators previewed Thursday will allow Dreamcast owners to play hundreds of titles originally written for the PlayStation. Each of four emulators, known collectively as bleem! for Dreamcast, can run 100 different PlayStation games on the Sega console.

The maker, Bleem Inc., is already embroiled in legal battles with Sony over software that allows PlayStation titles to run on PCs. More courtroom wrangling can probably be expected following Thursday's announcement.

Bleem plans to release the four game backs – selling at $20 a pop – sometime this summer.

Meanwhile, Sony is reportedly close to announcing that its answer to the Dreamcast – its long-awaited PlayStation2 console – will be available in Europe and the United States on Oct. 26.

The servers, which use performance-boosting, copper-chip technology, are built to carry out basic website tasks such as e-commerce and traffic management, IBM said. This represents the boldest move yet by the world's largest computer maker to join the Internet party, to which it was more than fashionably late.

IBM said the selling point for the new RS/6000 machines – the M80, F80, and H80 – was the use of copper-chip technology, which is said to deliver better performance at a lower cost than rivals' systems.

Sun currently dominates the market for mid-range computers, defined by market researchers as machines costing between $100,000 and $1 million.

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Virtual everything: Intel said Thursday that it plans to spend $200 million over the next two years building an Internet media business that will allow customers to transmit everything from movies to conferences to online training over the Internet.

The plan is the latest effort by the world's biggest chipmaker to broaden sales beyond the microprocessors that account for 80 percent of its revenue.

Intel Internet Media Services will turn the Web into a conveyance for transmitting audio and video, which might include conferences, movies, online training, and concerts.

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Copy this: Punctuated by an emphatic "No comment" from Xerox, Rick Thoman submitted his resignation as president and CEO of the world's largest copier manufacturer Thursday, according to the online edition of the Financial Times.

Although Xerox directors met to consider management issues associated with Thoman's resignation, the company had nothing to say, other than "Any reports you've seen are based on rumor and speculation, and Xerox cannot comment."

Paul Allaire, the man Thoman succeeded at the helm of Xerox, will take over on an interim basis.

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New drug on the Street: Novartis AG, the Swiss pharmaceuticals company, made the transatlantic jump Thursday, joining the New York Stock Exchange. It will be listed under the symbol NVS.